SEATTLE – As the spring practice season gets in full swing in anticipation of the Huskies season opener on Feb. 7 vs. Baylor in Las Vegas, the team received a welcome surprise last week. The Huskies moved into their newly-renovated locker room last week, and the awe has yet to wear off.

“It’s amazing,” senior infielder Hooch Fagaly said of the new locker room. “I thought the last locker room we had was incredible, and this just blows it away. “There are pictures of us all around it – at the World Series, us huddling together before games – and even our personal lockers are just awesome.”

“My whole senior class got to go in together,” Hayward said. “Obviously, we’ve been in the old locker room for a while. We knew that this new one was eventually coming. It was very much anticipated, so we all walked in, and I think a couple of us were screaming and shaking, just really excited. This brings in our era.”

As the players walked in, they caught their first glimpses of their new home-away-from-home. At 600 square feet, the new locker room features an open layout and individual lockers with personalized photos and nameplates for each player on two of the walls. At the center of the room, a giant “W” is stitched into the carpet, and large photos on the other walls show highlights of recent years, as well as the Huskies core values – Selflessness, Accountability, Toughness, Confidence, and Husky Fever.

“We have so much tradition in our program, we need to put that tradition, that history, and that inspiration on the wall for our team,” head coach Heather Tarr said. “It’s an exciting feeling when you walk in there knowing that our current players remember those moments. There’s some history woven in there. Our core values are on the wall. They see it everyday. Great players know how to visualize, and those images help them be able to visualize what we want to accomplish.”

This renovation marks the first major update to the Huskies locker room since it was first constructed in 1997, when Tarr was a senior third baseman on a Huskies team that finished third at the College World Series.

“When I followed the seniors in to see the locker room for the first time, it almost brought me to tears thinking about how I felt when I got to see the new thing,” Tarr said. “This represents a new era for our program.”

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Short Hops

The Huskies open the season Friday, February 7 vs. Baylor in Las Vegas. The Huskies complete 2014 schedule is available here.

Reserve season tickets for the 2014 season today. Single-game tickets for the Huskies 12-game home schedule go on sale Wednesday, February 26. More information is available here.

The Huskies open their home schedule Friday, March 14 against Pac-12 foe Utah at 5:00 p.m. at Husky Softball Stadium.